The Invisible Man by H G Wells

for in the morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry, and malignant, prepared for his
last great struggle against the world.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE SIEGE OF KEMP'S HOUSE
Kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil on a greasy sheet of paper.
"You have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran, "though what you stand to gain by
it I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob
me of a night's rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is
only beginning. The game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This
announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel
of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me—the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new
epoch—the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be
easy. The first day there will be one execution for the sake of example—a man named Kemp. Death
starts for him to-day. He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on
armour if he likes—Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions; it will impress
my people. Death starts from the pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes
along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you
also. To-day Kemp is to die."
Kemp read this letter twice, "It's no hoax," he said. "That's his voice! And he means it."
He turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it the postmark Hintondean, and
the prosaic detail "2d. to pay."
He got up slowly, leaving his lunch unfinished—the letter had come by the one o'clock post—and
went into his study. He rang for his housekeeper, and told her to go round the house at once,
examine all the fastenings of the windows, and close all the shutters. He closed the shutters of his
study himself. From a locked drawer in his bedroom he took a little revolver, examined it carefully,
and put it into the pocket of his lounge jacket. He wrote a number of brief notes, one to Colonel
Adye, gave them to his servant to take, with explicit instructions as to her way of leaving the house.
"There is no danger," he said, and added a mental reservation, "to you." He remained meditative for
a space after doing this, and then returned to his cooling lunch.
He ate with gaps of thought. Finally he struck the table sharply. "We will have him!" he said; "and I
am the bait. He will come too far."
He went up to the belvedere, carefully shutting every door after him. "It's a game," he said, "an odd
game—but the chances are all for me, Mr. Griffin, in spite of your invisibility. Griffin contra
mundum ... with a vengeance."
He stood at the window staring at the hot hillside. "He must get food every day—and I don't envy
him. Did he really sleep last night? Out in the open somewhere—secure from collisions. I wish we
could get some good cold wet weather instead of the heat.
"He may be watching me now."
He went close to the window. Something rapped smartly against the brickwork over the frame, and
made him start violently back.
"I'm getting nervous," said Kemp. But it was five minutes before he went to the window again. "It
must have been a sparrow," he said.
Presently he heard the front-door bell ringing, and hurried downstairs. He unbolted and unlocked
the door, examined the chain, put it up, and opened cautiously without showing himself. A familiar